To Fill Out Its App Store, Microsoft Wields Its Checkbook — Nowadays, cellphones are all about apps. And Microsoft is so determined to have lots of brand-name apps for its Windows Phone app store that it's willing to pay for them. — All an app developer has to do is sign on the dotted line.

Sequoia Set to Lead $500M Valuation Round for Instagram — The fact is, if you make a consumer Internet app that people actually use, you're probably raising venture capital right now. So we try not to write about every funding round that's in the works. But it looks like Instagram …

Don't Be Evil: How Google Screwed a Startup — After trying to go through the “proper channels” for almost a year now it's time to share this story of how Google screwed over our startup with the world. … In a nutshell: Google bid on, displayed, and then failed to pay for over $40,000 of advertising space on Hatchlings.

Shutting down spammers — Twitter continues to grow at a record pace — we now have 140 million active users and more than 340 million Tweets each day. As our reach expands, we become a more attractive target for spammers. While spam is a small fraction of the incredible content you can find on Twitter …

Airbnb's argument against tax doesn't fly — Special pleading is “a form of spurious argumentation,” Wikipedia explains, by “someone attempting to cite something as an exemption to a generally accepted rule, principle, etc.” — For example, San Francisco's Airbnb, the online …